life as a urinator

page updated: 31-Mar-2004

For the first 7 or so years of my life, peeing was the only function I associated with my vagina (although technically it is not the vagina that does the peeing). I was aware that vaginas were also involved in sex and babies from the time that my little sister was born and I was given a picture book on the subject, but I really don't remember associating my own genitals with anything but peeing. Maybe I figured that womanly, adult vaginas were different. Hairy and so forth.

I do not remember being toilet trained, although I remember the potty we had at home. It was wooden with a removable plastic business area and had a blue bear or something painted on the chair back.

I do remember being public toilet trained, by my grandmother. For several years I maintained the practise of hovering over toilet seats. See techniques for a full run down of my public toilet (and other) habits. I have peed in a wide variety of toilet types including mass-produced, fairly standardized, easily understandable North American toilets, idiosyncratic European toilets with mysterious flush devices, flushable and non-flushable squat toilets in Asia, intensely comfy and high tech toilets in Japan (push-button warm air bum-drying!), composting hippie toilets, outhouses, and many, many porta-potties/port-o-lets.

I have also been trained in the arts of peeing outside. As a Girl Guide and a member of a camp-happy family, I became a skilled squatter, and rarely pee on my pants, socks, or legs anymore. Apparently some girls pee sitting on the ground, but I have never done this. Places that I have peed outside include mostly forests, fields and roadside ditches, but also in oceans and lakes, in city parks, in the desert (but never the beach. Hmm.), in backyards when locked out or when roommates are tying up the bathroom, in alleys and parking lots, and in the doorways of a number of government buildings in Newfoundland. Oh, and sometimes swimming pools when I was small. Sorry.

I have openly peed in the company of others, mostly on road trips or camping trips. In regular, home situations, I didn't pee much with family members in the room, although my mum was prone to waltzing in and peeing while any of us were brushing our teeth or otherwise occupied in the bathroom, or to saying "come in" if we knocked and she was peeing. She thought it was entertaining when we protested ("Mu-um!"). She isn't a pervert, she's just got that "I've changed your diapers-- what are you embarrassed for?" mum thing.